KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minis­ter Syed Murad Ali Shah on Wednesday expressed his happiness over enrolment of displaced Thari children in the model school built within the recently established New Sen­hri Dars model village in Thar coalfield’s block-II.

A batch of 48 students belon­ging to the Bheel community was enrolled in the model school on Tuesday.

In his message to mark the occasion, Mr Shah said: “I am quite happy that we have not only given them good houses for living but are providing education to their children.”

The model village has been set up for the displaced families of the block-II near Islamkot.

Most of the newly enrolled students are entering school for the first time.

The Thar Foundation, opera­ting 24 schools in Islamkot and Mithi taluka of Tharparkar district, has enrolled 2,300 students.

The chief minister said that only a few days ago, the Sindh government through the foun­da­tion shifted the Bheel com­mu­nity to the model village and on Tuesday, their children were enrolled in the new school. It is a three-storey building with a capacity of 900 students from pre-primary to grade 10.

With the enrolment of the displaced families’ children, the number of total students at the school has crossed the 300 mark as children from the nearby villages have already been enrolled there.

Mr Shah said more students would be enrolled in the coming week as the process of shifting families to the village was continuing.

Out of 172 displaced fami­lies, 36 have been resettled another 30 would be shifted to the village within the next 10 days.

The process could be comple­ted by the end of March.

Relief programme in progress

Thar district administration on Wednesday reported to the provincial authorities that under the ongoing relief programme for the drought-hit areas, more than 97,000 ration bags had been distributed among families of pregnant and lactating women (PLWs) in the first two phases till the turn of 2018. The third phase has been started on Jan 1.

A report submitted by the Thar deputy commissioner said that 989 ration bags were distributed on Wednesday.

It said the PLWs, identified by the health department and its affiliated organisations, had been duly registered.

“Till date, 60,650 bags have been distributed in the phase-II while 36,656 bags had already been distributed in the phase-I,” said the report.

“Today (Wednesday) 632 families were given 50kg-bags of wheat in Phase-II.

“Moreover, 18 families who had not collected wheat bags in Phase-I, approached their respective sentinel points and collected wheat bags to their previous phase. Till date, 246,927 families in Phase-I and 248,804 families in Phase-II have received wheat bags ...”

It said the district and taluka hospitals in Thar had provided outpatient services to 338,157 children, who included 67,202 children below the age of five years, over the past six months.

A total of 23,723 children, including under-five, were treated indoors during the same period.

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2019